Jon Lester, Slugger Extraordinaire
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CHICAGO, ILL. — — Jon Lester, circa 2015, was widely considered the worst hitter in baseball. A sure out. In fact, that, combined with his notorious yips make him a surprisingly one-dimensional player: he throws a ball fast at home plate reasonably well. Or, reasonably well enough that he was offered up just the largest contract in Chicago Cubs history. I mean, I love the guy and he has pitched fantastically for the Cubs, but I was worried about shades of Alfonso Soriano when I saw those numbers. Anyways, Jon Lester couldn’t hit. Like, at all. Jon Lester was an absolute dumpster fire at the plate.
68 at-bats into his major league career, Lester finally got his first hit. It was a beautiful time. Our little pitcher was finally learning to hit. However, that first full season, even all the way until the final games of the National League Championship Series, he just hadn’t learned how to hit yet. It’s okay, it happens to the best of us. Me, you, whoever, we all had the same number of major-league hits as the guy on the hill every fifth day. What a world.
Fast-forward to the next spring. It was the only spring-training game I watched all the way through that year. Oh, but what a game to choose. In the bottom of a seven-run fourth inning, Lester crushed a no-doubter two-run home run. As some wise mage of Twitter said, there went all the magic. Lester used it all up to hit his first home run since high school in some basically meaningless exhibition before the season even started.
Now, we all know that the magic wasn’t gone. Whether it was the improbable comeback in the ninth inning of game four of the National League Division Series against the San Fransisco Giants, Jon Lester’s own ridiculous pinch-hit walk-off bunt to beat the Seattle Mariners 7–6, after being down 6–0, or coming back from a 3–1 series deficit against the Cleveland Indians in their very-real World Series victory, the Cubs were not short of a little special absurdity last season. But Jon Lester, through it all, didn’t come close to hitting another home run.
That changed early this season in St. Louis. In a game later lost because of some polarizing umpiring, Jon Lester nevertheless came about three feet from a deep home run to right center field. It was thing of beauty, but not for what it was, rather, for what it could have been. Lester had just missed his best chance to get that elusive dinger.
Until tonight.
And what a hit it was. Lester, the lefty, hit it a few rows up the opposite field bleachers. A solid, convincing home run. Jon Lester, back from the wilderness. Jon Lester: feared slugger. Jon Lester, a pitcher who rakes.
I don’t know what is in the water in Chicago. Whether it’s Jake Arrieta hitting masterful, majestic, towering home runs in between his twin no-hitters during the Jake Arrieta! second half of 2015/first half of 2016, Travis Wood hitting massive home runs during relief outings in the playoffs, or Kyle Hendricks knocking in as many runs as the rest of the offense, John Mallee consistently turns out pitchers that hit, if not as well as the rest of the lineup, but consistently enough to be a threat in the number nine slot (or eight, Joe Maddon is unpredictable). And, all in all, it’s a beautiful thing.
Congratulations to Jon Lester. You picked a guy off at first this year. You hit your first regular season home run. And, on the same night, you got your 2,000th strikeout. Great work. A contract very much well-spent.
